Through a coating of sugar thick enough to choke a Billboard pop chart, Donny and Marie Osmond once attempted to cross America’s great musical divide by proclaiming that they were a “little bit country, a little bit rock-n-roll.” Famously, the duo was neither, and their absurd posturing only reinforced the popular notion that to attempt too many musical things at once was the mark of an artist doomed to do none of them well. Like the high school dance at which well-established cliques dare not mingle, America’s music scene has been marked by clear lines of compartmentalization. In recent years, however, a vital wealth of performing artists has emerged to lay utter waste to the now archaic notion that sonic worlds should not collide. Defying stereotypes and crossing genres with fluid ease, grizzled veterans in Grand Old Opry exile have joined bright-eyed newcomers rising from mean street obscurity to create new sounds on the fertile ground where country, rock, and folk merge into something more. A new release entitled Transcontinental shows just how exciting the results of this kind of cross-pollination can be. Traveling to destinations from Nashville to Memphis to Liverpool, Transcontinental is an album that refuses allegiance to any style and in doing so manages to create one all its own. That it is the debut release of a 23-year old Australian import named Jedd Hughes simply makes it more remarkable still. Giving new definition to the word “prodigy,” Hughes has already had the kind of career that makes music historians weep. From his victory in a local singing competition at age eight to a tour of Europe at age 12 and recent gigs as Patty Loveless’ sideman and a performer in his own right, he’s making some serious noise in Nashville and beyond. Yet for all the distance Hughes has traveled, the young guitarist feels quite certain that he’s only now setting out on life’s road. Far from having finally arrived, Hughes says he’s just beginning to explore the inner territory from which his music springs and his true voice as an artist will be found. Based on the evidence he’s offered thus far, it’s going to be quite a journey, one fans of all kinds of music will be following with eager ears. Recently, we spoke with Hughes about his life, his new record, and where he thinks he’s heading to from here.

Tell us a little bit about your childhood.

I grew up in a little country town called Quorn, up in the mountains of south Australia. About a thousand people. And I grew up on a little farm, a sheep farm. My dad was a builder as well so we had a farm, and then my dad built sheds and fences and carports and all kinds of things. I lived there until I was 15, and then we moved towards the east coast, towards Sydney. I was in the middle of high school. I quit high school to go on the road with a band when I was 17. So I’ve been on the road since I was 17.

So the music bug bit early in your case?

Yeah, it really did. My dad got me started singing when I was about eight. By the time I was 12, I pretty much knew what I was going to be doing with my life because (while) all my friends were playing sport, I would come home and sit in my lounger and for three or four hours, five hours, play guitar and listen to music.

You’ve said your father had a big record collection. Did you have access to that? Did that influence the direction your life took?

It was pretty cool. The older I got, the more I sort of dug through his collection and would find little gems that would sort of relate to me getting older. The earliest record I remember listening to was Johnny Cash live from Folsom Prison and Marty Robbins’ gunfighting ballads. Then as I got a little older, I dug out the Byrds records and also Beatles ’65 which was an import from Japan. Zeppelin and the Doors and all kinds of cool stuff. So even though we lived in a very remote side of the world, it was pretty cool the kind of music that was around the house.

It sounds like your parents were very musically aware. Have they supported your decision to become a performing artist?

They really have. You couldn’t wish for more supportive parents than my parents. They really were incredible. They would drive me all over Australia to go to festivals and compete in competitions. They were really just incredibly supportive.

In fact, you won your first award at age 8, which is pretty astounding.

It’s funny, I don’t remember this, but Mum said I was seven and I heard this commercial on the radio for this talent quest, the Port Pirie Country Music Festival. Port Pirie is a little seaport town where they make steel. And in the early 90s, when country music was really booming, there was a lot of country music festivals everywhere in Australia. I was seven years old and I heard this commercial for this festival and I asked if I could go and sing in it. And they said no, but if you practice for a year, we’ll take you when you’re eight. So I practiced for a year, and they took me. I wasn’t playing guitar at that stage, I was just singing. I went into the competition, in the ten years and under section, and I won it. I won a hundred bucks. I was stoked. I was hooked. It was unreal. Obviously, I had no idea what I was in for, and I got a buzz from performing in front people and I made a hundred bucks. What could be better than that?

Does Australia have a broad country music scene or is it more of a niche thing?

There’s sort of less pigeonholing in Australia. They’re a little more like, “Well, if you write great songs and if we like them, then we’ll just call you a good artist. We won’t call you a rock and roll artist or a pop artist or a country artist. It’s more based on how real you are. You know, Australia is a very no-bull**** country. So it’s more based on if you’re real, that’s cool. We’ll call you good. We don’t have to put you into a category or play you on only one particular format. If you’re successful in Australia, you get played on every radio station.

That’s much different from America. Everything here is really niched and categorized, and it’s almost as if people don’t want to digest it unless it has a label.

It really is. And I find that really hard to deal with on a daily basis because I like all kinds of great music and to me it’s all just good music. I’ve grown up like that. And then to come over here and have it put in categories everywhere. It blows my mind.

You’ve talked about the influence of Buddy Miller and how discovering Buddy Miller was a real eye opener for you in terms of expanding your idea of the possibilities that were inherent in country music. What are those possibilities? What did Buddy make you see?

When I first heard him, I was like, “Wow… this is country music and it’s great songwriting, but it’s country music in the sense that it’s Graham Parsons and it’s the Byrds Sweetheart of the Rodeo. And then it’s also very rock and roll. Buddy Miller is everything I love. It’s great songwriting. It’s country. It’s rock and roll. It’s R&B. Man, it’s just everything I love rolled into one art form.

Is that something you seek to do with your music?

Yeah, it is. It’s definitely something I aspire to. Being out with Rodney Crowell is the same kind of thing. Rodney is country, and he’s British rock and roll. And he’s such an incredible songwriter. Those three elements are my favorite things to combine. If you can aspire to combine those things then the music is really interesting and engaging.

What other artists are inspiring you these days?

I love Tom Petty. I’ve loved Tom Petty for a long time. He’s the same kind of thing to me. I love the new Green Day record, American Idiot. I’ve been listening to that a lot. I love Coldplay. I like a lot of the new British bands. I like the Thrills, the Irish band. I think they’re pretty cool. I love the White Stripes. I just got their new record. It’s pretty good. Their records are very bold, which is what I like. They’re very much, “We don’t care. This is what we do. Here it is.” I respect the hell out of that.

You actually trained in bluegrass at South Plains College in Texas. Tell us a little bit about that.

I was fifteen years old in Australia. And I was just fed up with country music. Nothing about country music was inspiring to me. It just all seemed like sugar-coated pop crap. Or at least what I could get my hands on in Australia. That’s not to say I wasn’t listening to Hal Ketchum and great artists like that, but I just couldn’t find anything that was getting me going, and then one day a friend of mine from Adelaide was visiting, his name was Kim Warner, and he like, “Man you should get into bluegrass music!” And I was like, “Bluegrass?! Man, there’s no Telecasters in bluegrass!” It took me awhile to come around to it. It took about six months. I bought a couple of Tony Rice records and a couple of Alison Krauss Records. I just really fell in love with flat picking and playing acoustic music because I didn’t have to bring an amplifier or effects or anything. You turn up with a good acoustic guitar and a tuning fork. So I got into bluegrass, and I joined a band with Kim. That’s why I quit high school. We were playing in a country band. And when we weren’t doing that we were sitting around the hotel room playing bluegrass music. And Kim had been to the college a few years prior to that. He told me about it, and I wanted to go and learn more about bluegrass, and the history of it, and just be engrossed by it every day. So I went there when I was 18 and started studying with Joe Carr and Alan Mundy, which was cool because I knew about Alan Mundy from playing on Graham Parson’s records. So I was pretty excited about that.

What were your first impressions of America?

(Laughs) Honestly? I stepped off the plane in Texas and saw two dudes holding pretty large guns, machine guns, which, you know… automatic weapons are outlawed in Australia. I was like, Wow! Welcome to America.” There’s actually some similarities between west Texas and Australia. I found the people to be very friendly and very welcoming. Having not grown up in a very religious family, I found that to be a different aspect of culture that I hadn’t been around. I made a lot of friends in college right off the bat. It was a fantastic experience. This is my fifth year here.

You played guitar for Patty Loveless. How did that come about?

It was incredible. I had just moved to Nashville, and I didn’t have a job. I didn’t have any money because I’d spent it all on college. My parents were paying my rent in Nashville. So I was like, “Man, I’ve got to get a job.” So a friend of mine, who was the only person I knew in Nashville, his name is Terry McBride, who produced my record, he said, “Well, I’ve heard that Patty’s auditioning for a guitar player-singer. Someone who can play bluegrass and play country music. I thought that was perfect so he got me an audition. I went out and bought all their records and spent weeks and weeks learning every note on every record and every harmony part. After awhile, I thought, they’re not even going to call me for an audition.” This was four weeks later. Then out of the blue they called and said to come in tomorrow. I went in, and I ended up getting the gig with Patty, and it was such a great gig because I got to play Telecaster and play country and then we would all strip it down and play in front of a couple of mikes. Play some old-timey mountain music and bluegrass music. I loved that gig. It was fantastic.

Transcontinental is your first record. Tell us about its creation.

It was a great experience. You learn so much from making your first record, and you discover a lot about yourself and what you are and what you aren’t. That’s what it was for me. We spent a year and a half writing all those songs and then recording them. Then I started to get out on the road and play with a band, a three piece band because that’s really all I can afford to take out, which is great. I love the fact that we’re probably one of the only three piece bands in country music. You know, even though I’m very proud of that record, it’s maybe not a true representation of who I am. That’s not to say that everybody involved wasn’t totally rooting for me or into the record. I just felt like maybe I got a little sidetracked with the record.

In what way?

I think I just didn’t know much. I didn’t know much about recording or about sound. You know this is often the case with new artists in Nashville. Without getting out and playing those songs before you record them, you can’t really gauge if that’s really your voice or not. Rock and roll bands will spend a year on the road playing their songs… Or at least sort of introducing songs bit by bit in their set, seeing how they go, and then they’ll go in and record them. So I just sort of felt like once (the songs) got out on the road maybe some of those songs I didn’t really feel that comfortable playing or singing.

Do you feel like now that you’re touring and playing this material that it’s evolving as you play it?

Absolutely. It had to evolve given that I’m in a three-piece band and things just have to be different. But the cool thing is that I’ve really felt like in the last 18 month that I’ve really started to find my voice as a writer by myself. I’ve written a lot of stuff by myself for the next record, and it kind of forces you to not rely on the co-writing world of Nashville and to really find yourself as an artist and as a writer.

How did the actual experience recording a record differ from how you’d imagined it to be?

There were a few things I wasn’t sure I was comfortable with. Because the way of making records in Nashville, and I’m sure it’s the same way in the pop world, is there are so many great session players that you can just call anybody and get them in to play on the session. It was great in the fact that I just called up Dan Dugmore and said, “Man, I’ve loved your playing for years. I’m making a record. Could you come in and play?” And then suddenly you’re playing with Dan Dugmore in the studio. It’s incredible. There were parts of it where I had to compromise a little bit right off the bat, and I felt a little uncomfortable with that. Only because at some point the record label wants some hits, which is great. I mean, I want hits, too. But the way that’s done in Nashville is a little bit less pointed to what I like as a musician and to what I grew up listening to. It got a little funky. It never got to the point where I was really not happy about it. It was just like this is a little different than what I thought it might be.

Do you feel yourself butting heads a little bit with the Nashville establishment in certain ways?

Yeah. I went to Nashville with the mindset that Graham Parsons and Emmylou Harris and all that stuff is cool, which everybody thinks it is. But nobody really wants to take a chance on making that kind of music and putting it out there into the world. And I was like, “Well, this is kind of not like the country music that I grew up with. So it’s funny… Right when I moved to Nashville, and this just happened to work out. I didn’t plan for this, but I actually started listening to everything but country music when I moved to Nashville. A friend of mine lent me a Wallflowers record called Bringing Down the Horse, and I was like, “Wow! This is so much cooler than Chris Kagle or Kenny Chesney.” Because I had never bought those records in the first place, but I knew that’s what everybody was buying. Millions of people were buying those records. So through that I started listening to the local station called Lightning 100, which plays everything from the Wallflowers to U2 to Buddy and Julie (Miller).

Did that influence your record?

It definitely influenced Transcontinental, because there are some tracks on there, like Soldiers for the Lonely and Damn You Feel Good and You’re Not the Only Girl in Town, that are not your typical debut country record tracks. Slowly, bit by bit, I just realized that even though I’ve grown up with country music, maybe I’m not a country artist. Because country music is not the country music I grew up with.

What’s your favorite song on the new record?

My favorite would be Soldiers of the Lonely. Just because Patty came in and sang on it. She sang a great vocal part on it. I think that’s probably the strongest song that I wrote on the record, that I had a hand in writing.

Are there any other songs that you make sure you play every night?

I usually play Luxury Liner in the set. Just because it’s a fun song to play. I’ve always loved that song. I’ve always thought that was a really cool country rock and roll kind of song.

What guitars are you playing these days?

I’m using these guitars from a company in Germany called Duesenberg. They’re a new company, and they’re fantastic guitars. All the parts are made by this one guy in Germany, and they’re assembled there. I have two of the guitars. One is the Ronnie Wood model. Then I have another one that the Edge had out on tour for awhile. Then he sent it back to the guy because he already had his guitars lined up for every song of the tour, like he does. He said he loved the guitar but he wouldn’t really need it. So I snatched that up. They’re hollow bodies, but they have a center block. They’re kind of like a Les Paul shape, but not really. They’re bigger than a Les Paul.

What is it you like about playing them?

They have a really loose kind of vibe. You can’t really pinpoint it. I love the fact that it has its own sound. It has a P90 in the neck position and a humbucker in the bridge so you can sit back on the bridge and kind of get a Tele sound with the way the pick-ups are made. Then you can switch to the middle, and it has a sound kind of like Buddy (Miller’s) guitars. Then you can switch to the neck and it has a completely different sound again. Being in a three-piece band it’s great to have three different sounds on the one guitar so you can switch them around.

How have Elixir Strings worked out for you?

You know, I’m touring in a van with my boys. The three of us. Sharing the driving. Driving all over the countryside. Using Elixir Strings, number one you’re not changing strings every night because they last. And number two, for me, I really like the coating on the string because you don’t get string noise when you slide when you’re playing live. There are sometimes when it’s great to have string noise. I love the vibe of that on records. But it’s easy to slide around, and my hands are so acidic that I just look at a new set of strings and they die. I can actually get two or three nights out of one set of strings. That’s a big deal for me because I’d been changing strings every night until I started using Elixirs.

What would you say would be the one or two things you’d like to achieve, those milestones that in your mind would say “I’ve arrived.”

I would say creating a body of work that you could look back on and say, “Man, those were the best songs I could have written at the time, and that was the best possible way I could have recorded them at the time.” And then to have the one classic record that everybody identifies you with, or a couple. Like in the case of the Beatles where it was Revolver, Rubber Soul… But to have a body of work that you can look back in 50 years and still listen to, still be proud of it. That would definitely be one of them. And the other would be to develop a fan base where you can go out and tour as you like and have a built-in audience ready and waiting. Because playing live to me is totally where it’s at. That’s where I get my kicks from. I love recording as well, but if I’m out playing, it inspires me to write. When I’m out on the road playing, that’s where I get all my inspiration. Just being in different environments. So if I’m out playing live, then everything’s peachy. To have a solid touring base so that you can get out and play every year is definitely a big goal of mine.

What’s next on the agenda for Jedd Hughes?

I’ve been writing for the next record for the last few months. Just sort of writing bits and pieces. So I’d like to make another record. When I’m ready to make it, really. I don’t really have a time frame. I really want the next record to really be me. A no-compromise, this-is-who-I-am-and-what-I-am record. And in some respects, I’m still sort of working that out. So I’m just writing songs here and there, and feeling my way through to the next record. I’m actually pulling together a little home studio at the moment to do some pre-production stuff. So I’ll just start chipping away at stuff at home, and just sort find out exactly who I am.